


The Last Hour of Zardeenah's Shadow

by Ashling



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Action/Adventure, Background Femslash, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/F, Fantasy, Friendship, Gen, Interesting People You Meet In Prison, Magic, Slavery, Strategy & Tactics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25979557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Katara had a plan.Or, the story of what happened at the Battle of Osakhafi Gate, from the perspective of one very busy waterbender.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	The Last Hour of Zardeenah's Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saiditallbefore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiditallbefore/gifts).



"I was _sure_ they'd come get us tonight." Though this was the sixth time that Lucy had said that, she said it with as much disappointment as she had the first time. Katara, who had given her a good pep talk the first couple times, now just gave her a shoulder squeeze. She felt responsible for morale, especially because at seventeen she was two years Lucy's senior, but she too was dearly disappointed that their plan to instigate a three-way global battle hadn't really panned out.

Despite the manacles, the guards, and the miles of water in every direction, they could have busted out if they had really wanted to; Katara's waterbending would take care of most problems and Lucy's royal status (namely, that anybody who hit her with a cannonball was definitely in for it with the Tisroc) would take care of the rest. But they had gotten themselves captured for the sole purpose of beginning a fight that would end in the destruction of the Osakhafi Gate, and for that they needed help. They had promised each other that they would give up the plan and leave if they absolutely had to—neither of them was foolhardy enough to risk getting taken to Calormen—but their deadline had been the end of the winter solstice night, and the sky was beginning be streaked with the very deepest blue. They were still hanging on, partly expectant, partly bored. And Katara in particular was not enjoying spending so much time with her own thoughts. 

It really wouldn't take that much effort from their friends, was the thing. Once you got over the international diplomatic implications of it all, destroying the Osakhafi Gate probably would have only a dozen ships and some really good benders. The Gate consisted of two huge spars of rock that jutted up out of the water, between which hung a rusting, overwrought metal gate of unknown origin. It had always been tradition for fishermen to anchor their ships by chaining themselves to the Gate so they could catch squid, but in the past year the Calormene military had taken it over entirely. 

Using massive chains as thick as a wrestler’s fist, they had set up an elaborate circle of anchored ships. The whole thing was structured like a wheel, with the Gate as the hub, chains as the spokes, and Calormene ships chained in a circle that served as the rim. It was akin to a floating military base. In the time they had spent in one of the many cage lining the deck of one of the slave ships, Lucy and Katara had estimated that there was, on average, about two slaves for every one soldier, about a hundred and twenty people per ship, and usually anywhere from sixteen to twenty ships, depending on the day. The night of the winter solstice, there were seventeen ships, which meant roughly seven hundred soldiers on ships whose maneuverability was basically nil, with no bending to speak of. 

The international diplomatic implications of it all remained, unfortunately. While slave-trading in international waters had been made illegal, the Osakhafi Gate was not, technically speaking, slave-trading, since it was run by the military and the people there were technically prisoners of war. The Calormene military was "exploring" various "unmapped territories" and occasionally running into problems when the locals, for no reason whatsoever, took a great disliking to them and committed various "crimes" against them, for which said locals were then arrested and sent to the Oskhafi Gate for processing, which was still technically international waters. Once a prisoner accused of war crimes had been held by the military for a month, they could then be transferred to the civilian prison system, and in Calormen, the civilian prison system was mostly comprised of auctions. Which was all a very long and adult way to say, "so, yeah, they do just sail around snatching people, but we can't do anything about it without launching an all-out war."

Truly, Katara appreciated that the Pevensies had loathed the whole process of conquering the Lone Islands, which itself had been an attempt to stymie Calormen's most repugnant industry from infringing on Narnian waters, and she knew that despite Lucy's cordial, a Centaur had died, not to mention that in the thick of battle, the Pevensies themselves had ended up killing more than a few loyalists to the previous Governor, an experience they were not keen on repeating. Katara also appreciated that the King of the Earth Kingdom was just aware enough of his own shortcomings that he was totally against foreign entanglements of any kind. Most of all, Katara appreciated that Firelord Zuko had pledged to make his rule one of peace, that the Northern Water Tribe was focused on recovery, and that the Avatar had committed himself to a quest to bring back Airbending as a discipline. It all made sense.

Except that Katara also badly missed the days when she would find people in trouble, start a fight, and watch as all her friends joined in, with ice and rock and fire flying in every direction, Appa sailing out of the sky to save the day, and sometimes even a really good breakfast at the end of it. It was too bad, the way they all had to grow up, and be mature, and eventually decide whether to become either world leaders or criminals. Considering her options, Katara was glad she'd chosen criminal. Maybe certain people were right, and she was still acting like a kid, all passion and outrage, but then, maybe those people were still annoying lifeless lazy boring sticks in the mud! No, not helpful. 

Katara put that thought aside, looked up, and scanned the horizon to the east. The sky was definitely getting richer, and it seemed like there were fewer stars than before. 

"We better go now," she said to Lucy. "While the moon is still in the sky." It was best for her waterbending. And this night in particular suited them. The other prisoners were mostly women, and the fact that it was Zardeenah's sacred night meant that some of those women might take this jailbreak wrapped in bending more in stride; Zardeenah was, among other things, the goddess of virgins, the goddess of night, and not a huge fan of slavery. So that could explain it all in a pinch.

"Can we just wait ten more minutes?" said Lucy. 

Katara had to stifle a flare of annoyance. She was not used to being the more cynical, practical part of a mission, and she didn’t like playing that role. she and Lucy were too alike, in some ways, and at a certain point they had to stop hoping that the consciences of their friends would turn around, and just get stuff done by themselves.

"That's what you said last time," she said. 

Lucy said nothing, which could have been her holding back a fit of pique or could have just been her thinking.

Plan B was still a jailbreak, but way less satisfying and effective than Plan A (get everyone to come join the party) had been. They were going to dress as Calormene soldiers, steal the master key that would unlock the ship from the Osakhafi Gate chains, and sail away as fast as they could. Lucy was a good sailor, and Katara could speed the ship up at a pinch.

Katara said, "The last time the guards swept the holding cells was more than ten minutes ago, and they come through every fifteen minutes on average, so it shouldn't be long. We'll grab them the next time they come through." 

Lucy sighed and held out her manacled hands. "All right."

Lying down and bracing her head against the side of the cage so that she had a good sightline on what her feet were doing, Katara began to waterbend four razor-thin slices of unnaturally dense ice, each slice slowly carving a groove into the iron of Lucy’s manacles. It was tricky stuff, because if Katara so much as moved a toe wrong, she might end up cutting into Lucy's wrist, where there happened to be some very important arteries. In the end, Lucy didn't get so much as a papercut, and the wrist irons fell with a dull thud to the deck, cut into four halves.

"Good work," said Lucy, with a smile growing on her face. And that was one of the best things about Lucy, wasn't it, the way that she still enjoyed things even after she'd experienced them before: bending, riding, banqueting, dancing, escaping prison. It was nice to be around someone who _enjoyed_ life, instead of just moping around, and—

Before Katara could let that thought develop too far, a woman in the cage across from them crawled over and raised an eyebrow, holding out her manacled hands expectantly. She even had manacles on her ankles, which meant that she was a scary woman by Calormene standards, which meant that Katara liked her. But still. Katara shook her head and raised her finger to her lips: _not yet, quiet._ Strangers, even allied strangers, were hard to figure out, and there were way too many different unknown variables as it was. Readying herself for a quick capture, Katara assembled a large floating blob of seawater from a puddle on the deck, to which the woman sat down in surprise with a hard thump. Luckily, nobody seemed to notice. Katara split the blob in two and raised her feet, ready for battle.

But the guards never came. At first, Katara thought that perhaps her sense of time was thrown off by the intense anticipation of it all, but then she glanced up at the sky again and saw that it was a little bit lighter. Oh dear. Maybe the guards on duty had gotten drunk and overslept their shift change, down in the hold where the hammocks were? It was possible.

They couldn't wait until the moon dropped, and Lucy's chains couldn't be mended either, so they had to act. With a sigh, Katara began slicing at the bars of her cage with ice. She wished it wouldn't be quite so loud. The metal of the cage was different than the metal of the manacles and made a more high-pitched sound, waking up a few more other prisoners, who started murmuring to each other. Not exactly covert, but it couldn't be helped. Soon enough, Lucy was able to push the door of the cage open and walk out onto the main deck. With one last complicated gesturing of her feet, Katara crafted some puddled seawater into a shard of ice with a handle only a little larger than the average dagger. Lucy plucked out of the air, Katara stood up, and they proceeded quietly into the hold of the ship, Lucy going first with the dagger in front of her.

Down below, they tiptoed past some two dozen soldiers in their hammocks before they found the captain's quarters. It was a lovely little room, with many tiny lanterns perched on the edges of the desk and a goblet of coffee still steaming next to an open book. No captain, though. Lucy began going through the desk drawers to see if she could find the master key that could unlock the ship from the many chains that bound it to the Osakhafi Gate, while Katara took a few steps forward and then peeked under the bed, all her weight on her left foot just in case she needed to waterbend with her right. There was nothing there.

"He might come back any second," Katara whispered. "We better get out of here."

"Um," said Lucy.

Katara turned around to find that somehow, as silently as if she had materialized from thin air, a girl had appeared behind Lucy. She had to be older than Katara, but she was small and fine-featured in a way that belied her calm dark eyes and the knives in her hands, which were crossed against Lucy's throat. Katara started moving, right foot swinging up and the coffee flowing up out of the cup, before her mind registered what was going on; an endless string of near-death escapes as a teenager had at least given her quick reflexes, and in one kick, she had the mystery girl's hands and blades frozen in a blob of coffee, with one curl of coffee going up across the girl's mouth so she couldn't scream.

Gingerly, Lucy lifted the girl's arms and got out from under the ice like it was the world's clunkiest necklace. "Do you know her?" she said.

Something about her was vaguely familiar, but Katara shook her head as she grabbed the girl by the arm, yanking her further inside the captain's quarters before she could try to make a run for it. "I don't think she's Calormene." The mystery girl had deep brown skin, fine silks in shades of purple, and a single braid down her back, none of which was typical among Calormen's warrior women. 

Then there was another girl in the doorway, a Calormene girl older and taller than Katara, outfitted in Archenlandish leather armor and bearing two knives herself. 

"Aslan's mane," said the new girl, exasperatedly, in the two seconds before Katara could draw moisture from the air, and that stopped Katara's hand, or rather her foot, from freezing the living daylights out of her. "Lucy, I'm proud of you for becoming a witch, but can you please unfreeze my wife?"

"You got married _without me_?" said Lucy.

The girl in the doorway made a helpless gesture with her knives. "It was an impulse decision."

At that, the first mystery girl stomped her foot with an air of displeasure.

"Not that I regret it!" said the girl in the doorway, half-teasing, half-fond, and Katara figured that they weren't really enemies, so she did another one-legged kick and unfroze the first mystery girl's hands, leaving a small puddle of coffee on the floor.

Lucy gestured towards her. "This is Katara, and she does magic, but she doesn't like being called a witch."

"Because I'm _not_ a witch, and it’s not magic," Katara said. Meanwhile, the unfrozen girl had somehow disappeared both her knives and was working on Katara's manacles with a couple of very thin, sharp pieces of metal. The manacles fell open almost at once.

"Okay," said the tall girl in the doorway, "well, I'm Aravis, this is my my wife Inej—"

Lucy opened her mouth.

Aravis plowed on, hastily. "—and _yes_ she is the Pirate Queen, and no we didn't bring her whole crew along, we were just doing an island-hopping honeymoon when we heard you got taken to the Gate. Yes we'll have a marriage celebration sometime, yes you're invited, no we don't have the time to talk about it party logistics right now. I’ve got the key." She held it up. The bronze engravings shone. “Let’s go.” With that, she turned on her heel and headed back through the hold of the ship. Lucy followed her, and pretty soon they were, from the sounds of it, getting deep into wedding talk.

"Thanks for that," Katara said to Inej, holding up her free hands as they followed behind.

Inej gave her one small nod. Apparently, she wasn’t much of a talker. Or maybe she was shy?

Katara gestured at the two girls ahead of them. “Shouldn’t they be quieter?” They were walking back through rows of hammocks now, and Katara was prepared to fight all twenty to thirty of them, but not looking forward to it.

"The men are all drugged and the captain's dead," said Inej. There might have been a glint of emotion in _the captain’s dead,_ but it passed too quickly for Katara to pin it down. In front of them, Aravis was taking the steps back up to the deck two at a time.

"Oh," said Katara politely, following Aravis up the steps. She knew she couldn’t be silent, but she didn’t know what to say. She wanted to know if the captain had died in cold blood, but then, a part of her also didn’t want to know the answer. 

Inej shrugged defensively. "Aravis wouldn’t—"

Suddenly, up ahead, there was a clash of metal on metal. _"Fall back!"_ shouted Aravis, and Katara went up a step before she saw it: out on the deck, dozens of Calormene soldiers, far more than had been on the ship. They must have come from other ships, they must have somehow found out, and with the element of surprise gone, so did their plan. 

A flash of silver went whizzing past Katara's head, between Aravis and Lucy, and one of the soldiers fell screaming. Lucy skidded down the steps and Inej surged forward to take her place. It was hard to pick targets; the stairs were narrow and what Katara could see between Aravis and Inej was still dark, but she made a fist-sized diamond of hard ice and slammed it into as many helmets as she could make out. Slowly, they were forced down the steps—Inej's arm was bleeding—bowstrings went _twang_ and they all dove for cover.

"Katara!" Lucy was standing in the area of the hold that stored food, nearly obscured by all hanging dried meats and onions and garlic, and brandishing what looked like an enormous scimitar. She hauled it over her head and brought it down like a tree-cutter with an axe. The smash of earthenware confused Katara, but only for a second, because soon after it came the rich, sweet smell of wine. Again Lucy smashed another huge jar, and by the time she got to the third, Katara had already begun waterbending wine into a single frozen wall, blocking the stairs. In less than a minute, there was a sheet of frozen wine about a two feet thick between them and the Calormene soldiers. The arrows weren't much to that.

"Everybody still alive?" said Katara, looking around, heart pounding hard. The swinging of drugged Calormene soldiers in the hammocks beyond made her feel uneasy, and the frozen wine was keeping them trapped in as much as it was keeping their enemies locked out. What were they going to do?

"Inej is hurt," said Lucy.

When Katara turned around, sure enough, Inej was bleeding heavily from a deep cut in her left forearm, while Aravis was tearing off some of her tunic for a bandage, forehead against Inej’s temple, murmuring something in her ear. At the expression on her face, something in Katara’s chest twinged with a memory. 

Inej’s lips were one thin hard line. “I’ll be fine,” she said through her teeth. “You go on.” 

Katara was already withdrawing a melon-sized blob of wine to help her heal Inej’s wound.

For a second, both Inej and Aravis stared, fascinated, as the wound began to heal. Then Lucy, from somewhere in the midst of the hammocks, said, “How did they know we were here?” and it was strategy time again. 

“Let’s figure that part out later,” said Katara. “We need a different idea. Do you two have any ideas? We were going to detach the ship from the Gate and sail off. That was what you were after, right?”

Aravis didn’t answer; she was too intent on watching the healing. When it was complete, she ran her fingers over the smooth skin of Inej’s arm, gently, and then looked intently at Inej’s face as though she expected to still see pain there. But there was none, and Aravis finally focused. 

“Your plan was the same as ours,” she said. “I mean, if we can’t detach the ship from the Gate, we do still have the craft we sailed in on, but that can’t hold more than ten people and Inej never leaves slaves behind.

"We were going to detach the ship from the Gate and sail off," said Aravis, who was also scavenging, comparing two swords together. "I mean, we do have the ship we came in on, but that can't hold more than ten people and Inej doesn't like leaving slaves behind."

"Slaves who are left behind often get punished,” said Inej. “Badly."

Katara felt her nose wrinkling in incredulity, and tried to iron out that expression. “For what, not breaking free of their chains and jumping into the fight on the side of their own slavers?” 

“Slavers are sadists,” said Inej flatly. “They only want excuses.”

“Well, I’m—I’m sorry,” said Katara, feeling wretched. “But we don’t have a backup plan that can take everybody with us. Even if we manage to make it through the horde up there, I can only take a few extra people iceballing. Between your ship and my bending, we can take maybe twenty at most? And that includes us. And there’s at least seventy slaves on this ship.”

"Iceballing?" said Aravis

Katara drew a circle in the air with her fingertip. "Giant hollow ball of ice. Inside it, you can run on water. It's not great for long distances, though."

"Let's iceball it to your ship,” said Lucy decidedly. Everyone looked over at her. She had dropped the scimitar and picked up quite a few more things, including a bow, a quiver of arrows, a short sword, and a charming little blue and gold book which she stuck in her pocket. “They will spend time chasing us, time figuring out what to report to the Tisroc, time to tend to their wounded and figure out if the drugged soldiers are dying or not. I doubt they’ll start hurting anybody until they have regrouped. That’s plenty of time for us to come back with the Lone Islands fleet. Especially if the mermaids get involved.”

“I thought they were gentle,” said Katara.

“Oh, that’s just Anemone,” said Lucy with a flick of her wrist. “I love her, but she’s not at all a warrior. No, I’m talking about the deep-sea mermaids. The types that wear scales in their hair from the serpents they’ve speared. That sort of thing. And they probably will want to join in; we’ve got a treaty, they’re big on honor, and if I get wounded that’s a perfect _casus belli_.”

"You're trying to start a war?" said Inej. She looked, for the first time, a little bit impressed.

"Not looking to overthrow the Tisroc, just looking to break up the Gate," said Katara.

"Which is an act of war,” put in Aravis.

"Yeah, but..." Katara looked from Inej to Aravis and then back again. "Yeah, I guess."

"And you call _my_ friends dramatic," said Inej to her wife.

Aravis threw her hands in the air. "Not my plan!"

"So we’re iceballing it?" said Lucy, handing Aravis a quiver and bow of her own.

"That depends," Aravis said, looking over at Inej.

It was a long look. Finally, Inej said, "I told you we should've waited for my crew before we attacked," but within her complaint was a grudging assent.

"It's Zardeenah's Shadow, I thought we'd have good luck," said Aravis apologetically. 

Although she had only met Inej and Aravis minutes ago, Katara felt awful, but she knew they didn't have time to talk it out just then. 

"Okay, form up," she said. "Archers first, support behind."

“Archers are support,” said Aravis. “Isn’t that backwards?” But to Katara’s pride, all the girls, including Aravis, were already getting in formation.

“I’ll shield us,” said Katara. “You’ll see.” 

They were in a square formation, with one girl at each corner, Lucy and Aravis Calormene bows in front, followed by Katara and Inej behind. 

"Nobody shoot till I say shoot. Get it?" said Katara.

"Got it," said Aravis, nocking an arrow to her bow. Inej got on her tiptoes so she could lean over her wife's shoulder to give her kiss her cheek and a slap on the ass. It was, after all, their honeymoon.

"Good," said Lucy, and then Katara bent the wine backwards, into a round dome of red-purple ice that covered them all as they climbed up the stairs once more. Up on the deck, dozens, possibly hundreds of soldiers awaited them—they must have climbed aboard this ship from the others. In the dark, it was like looking at a nightmare from the inside of a blood-colored jewel.

At first, the soldiers seemed stunned by their appearance, and moved away. The shock and horror on their faces made Katara feel guilty for attacking, but she knew they’d have to even the odds if they wanted to get out alive.

"Pick a soldier," said Katara, and then, opening up fist-sized holes in the dome, one each in front of Lucy and Aravis, "Shoot."

Aravis's shot hit a man through the arm; Lucy's was better, and got a soldier right through the neck. Though Katara was occupied by quickly closing the holes and holding the dome strong against an incoming hail of arrows, she still caught the way that Lucy's shoulders hitched up a little, like a flinch, and again she felt terrible. Lucy had ridden to battle before, but usually did her shooting long-distance, so she had never seen herself kill a person up close, and Katara had not wanted to change that. 

A hail of returning arrows came from the soldiers around them as they made their way towards the edge of the deck, and Katara closed her eyes to concentrate more acutely on the wine. She did not have enough of it to make as thick a dome as she had a wall, and the waning strength of her waterbending due to the moon's disappearance from the sky made the dome a less than perfect defense. If a few arrows hit it in the same place, it shattered, and Katara was constantly having to concentrate on mending its cracks and weak spots while keeping the rest of it intact. And then, suddenly, the arrows stopped.

Some soldier had the bright idea of hacking away at the ice with his sword, so now Katara had to physically push soldiers out of their path with ice as well as keeping the dome as intact as she could. With dozens of fractures created in the dome even second, she could barely keep walking, and they were only a third of the way to the railing that marked the edge of the ship’s deck.

"You want a foray?" said Aravis, laying down her bow—it was no kind of a weapon for battle that close—and drawing her sword. Katara thought, dimly, that there were too many soldiers to fight properly, but if things went on like this, pretty soon the dome would be broken anyways. Perhaps Aravis could drive them back.

"On three," said Katara. Inej had knives in hand again, long blades like hunting knives, and Lucy had her dagger. "Three, two, one." And then she dropped the front of the the dome, leaving part of it behind them and above them in case some soldiers got bright ideas about climbing the rigging and shooting at them from above.

Aravis was magnificent with her sword, but once in the thick of things, it was easy to get overwhelmed; Inej moved with such swiftness that it compensated for her blades not having as long a reach; but Lucy was young and not much used to close-quarters fighting, and rather than picking off enemies, Katara found herself mostly protecting Lucy with whips of wine. At first, they managed to get a few steps closer to the ship railing, but then the Calormene soldiers seemed to finally understand where they wanted to go, and a surge of them cut between the girls and the railing.

“Shield!” yelled Aravis, and on instinct Katara slammed down the dome of ice again, so fast that it caught half an arrow sticking through it, as well as a man’s hand. An incoming hail of arrows was worse than any previous attack, and the dome was clearly faltering.

"Back downstairs?" Katara panted. Once the sun rose, she thought she could keep one thick door of ice up. And then maybe, maybe they could wait until nighttime again when her waterbending increased in strength? Or, no, they wouldn't last that long. There was no way they'd last that long. The soldiers would think of something—

"Beats dying on deck," said Aravis.

Again Katara closed her eyes so that she could focus on the wine, shuffling back across the deck. She felt Inej grab her by her upper arm and steer her around something—she didn't open her eyes to see but she bet it was the severed hand—and then the arrows let up, only to be followed by more soldiers hacking away with their swords. Katara wanted to cry with frustration. Their way was blocked, and she wasn't strong enough to clear it.

"Thoughts on surrender?" said Aravis.

Lucy spoke up, but tentatively. She was the youngest of them all, and where Aravis only sounded grim, Lucy sounded scared.

"Shouldn't we die rather than become slaves?" Lucy said.

"No," said Inej flatly. "Death is the one thing you can't recover from. But they won’t take our surrender anyways."

Katara felt sick. This was all her fault. She felt sorry for dragging Lucy and Lucy’s friends into this, she felt sorry for the slaves that deserved an actual escape, she felt sorry for herself, and most of all—suddenly—she felt sorry for the way she had left things with Mai. The memory Katara had tried to forget came surging back, and this time, instead of a hot flash of rage and abandonment at the still mask of Mai’s face, the way her mouth only tightened a little at every accusation Katara laid against her, now Katara only felt a reverberating ache. Though the details of the memory were sharp—Mai was wearing her a dress so deeply red it looked like dried blood, and constantly touching her knives inside her sleeves in a nervous habit only Katara knew about—the emotions of it had faded, somehow, and now Katara only wished she had said something different. Something like _I know it’s not your way to talk about this, but could you tell me you don’t hate me before I go?_ Something like _I’m only this angry because it scares me that you can make me feel like this._ Something like _when I’m about to die I’ll be thinking about how I’m the only one that knows you run your fingertips over the handles of your knives when you’re anxious, when I’m about to die I’ll be hoping they don’t make you speak at my funeral, when I’m about to die I’ll be thinking that if you were here, right now, only to say I told you so, I could be happy._ And _I was never really angry with you_ and _please, please don’t be angry with me._

Katara opened her eyes and focused her energy on keeping the dome strongest at their backs. Through her tears, she could see that the sun was beginning to rise.

“Soon,” was all Katara said. 

Lucy squeezed her arm. Wordlessly, Inej offered Lucy another knife, and Lucy accepted it with her free hand. The front of the dome was fracturing far faster than Katara could re-freeze it. Lucy was humming a song under her breath. Inej leaned into Aravis and said, so quietly that Katara barely caught it, “I’m glad we got married.”

Then one sweep of a sword knocked out a piece of ice and it was like a pane of stained glass being knocked out, the world in stunning sunrise color beyond the red of the wine ice, and then it was chaos. Katara closed her eyes again, and focused hard.

It could have been seconds or it could have been minutes—she heard Lucy gasp, at one point, and nearly opened her eyes, but she knew it wouldn’t be any help—and then came a huge thump. Something had hit the deck, something that made the ship rock wildly. There was screaming, and suddenly the bashing of swords on ice stopped.

“By the Lion,” said Lucy. 

“Fucking hell,” said Inej. 

Katara opened her eyes and looked up. “Appa!”

Yes, there he was, flapping his big flat tail placidly as he floated far above, too far above to be within reach of arrow range. Beautiful, fluffy, wonderful Appa, and somebody sitting in his saddle was floating a ring of rocks above him and hurling them down onto the deck below. It had to be Toph, because there didn’t seem to be much aim; a few rocks landed in the water, a few rocks landed harmlessly on the deck, and a few smashed soldiers flat. 

“So, iceball?” said Lucy breathlessly.

Gathering up her strength, Katara tightened up the dome and ran, taking the other girls with her. None of the soldiers tried to stop them, because they were too busy dodging or even diving off the side of the ship to avoid the falling rocks. The slaves on the top deck were protected from the huge falling rocks by their cages, and they were chanting something, but Katara had no idea what it was.

Once the girls got to the railing, Katara climbed up on it and perched. "On my count," she said. Lucy grabbed her hand and she squeezed it hard once before letting it go so Katara could waterbend. "Three, two, one." And they all jumped together.

In one smooth motion, Katara waterbended a huge curl of seawater up towards them, joining with her dome of wine to create a ball, and then melting the wine away to replace it with seawater—she didn't know why, but seawater was easier to freeze than fresh water and freshwater was easier to freeze than wine—and then the iceball crashed into the water. Katara found herself buried in a heap of limbs. The continual mental strain of keeping the wine dome intact was gone, and in its place, the glass-like iceball let in all kinds of colors: the blues, the oranges, the palest pink. It felt like finally being able to breathe properly. Even after everybody had peeled themselves off of Katara, Katara still lay there, breathing hard. 

“Everybody still alive?” she said, eventually. 

"Everyone’s injured, including you," said Lucy, "but yes." 

Katara was injured, come to think of it—there was an arrow through her upper arm. How had she not noticed that before?

“Come here and I’ll heal you up,” she said, and Lucy did. Politely, they ignored the soft sounds Inej made in her throat as Aravis kissed her long and hard.

“How soon do you think we can launch a counterattack?” said Katara, just so she could talk. She felt breathless, still.

“It will take less than half an hour to get everyone together, so however long it takes for us to get to the Lone Islands, plus half an hour, and then the return trip should be a lot shorter,” continued Lucy. “Mermaids, you know.” 

She looked at Katara, and Katara looked back, and suddenly they both burst out into hysterical laughter. They laughed even as Katara finished healing everybody, and they laughed as Katara skimmed the iceball across the surface of the ocean, and they only stopped laughing once Appa alighted beside them on the water.

Katara drew back the top half of the iceball, leaving the bottom half as a sort of makeshift boat, and squinted up at Appa. Against the rays of the rising sun, it was hard to see who was in Appa’s saddle.

“Can we come up?” Katara called.

“Oh, why not?” Toph yelled back, and Katara scrambled up and launched herself at Toph so hard that she knocked Toph flat on her back. 

“I’m so happy to see you,” Katara said.

“Well I can’t see you and I’m not _sooooooo_ happy to get knocked the fuck over,” said Toph, sitting up and brushing herself off. 

“Sorry,” said Katara, and then, because she couldn’t help it, she went in for another hug. This time, Toph patted her back a few times, whether to comfort Katara or to make Katara stop, Katara couldn’t tell, but then Toph said, “Yeah, yeah,” sounding so much like herself that Katara was in danger of crying all over again.

“How did you find us?” said Katara. “I mean, how were you able to tell Appa where to go?”

“I didn’t,” said Toph. “She did.”

“Hi, Katara,” said a very familiar voice.

Katara let go of Toph and looked up. Mai was standing there, looking down at her with that still mask of a face, a little movement in her long sleeves where she was touching her knives. The sea breeze told Katara what she already knew: Mai smelled faintly like cherry blossoms.

For once in her life, Katara had absolutely no idea what to say. 

And she had no time to find out, either, because Lucy shouted, “I _told_ you!” and there, over the horizon, moving far faster than any ships had a right to, came a full armada with the scarlet lion emblazoned on all their white sails. In mere seconds, the ships were upon them.

Katara used her waterbending to throw them all aboard the nearest ship. There were more Narnian creatures aboard than she had ever seen in her life, Talking Animals and fauns and centaurs and gryphons and even a few men-shaped creatures that might have been men or might have been werewolves. And two who were definitely men, boys really, who had Lucy enveloped in a giant sandwich of a hug. Katara watched, so full of feeling she thought she might burst.

“They would have had the element of surprise,” said Aravis, beside Katara. “But now that’s lost.”

Right. The mission at hand. “We have an Earthbender and a fleet of ships. We can figure something out,” said Katara. Despite her sleepless night, and all the fighting, she thrummed with energy. “A large number of the soldiers will be on the ship we just left, tending to the wounded, cleaning up, that sort of thing.” 

“Ed!” Aravis shouted. One of the brothers, the dark-haired one, looked over without letting go of Lucy. 

“What?” he yelled back.

“You can get more hugs later. It’s time to talk strategy.”

As high as the stakes were, Katara couldn’t help but feel amazed and pleased by how swiftly and smoothly the planning went. Though the Pevensies were real kings and queens, and Peter was a veteran general, they talked like Katara’s friends did in times of crisis, unguardedly, with their voices overlapping, sometimes rising with new ideas or cutting themselves off mid-sentence if they realized their suggestion wouldn’t work, never talking unless they had something new to say. And royalty had no precedence, either; at one point Toph told Peter that his idea for an aerial attack of dwarfs on gryphons was trash because the top-deck cages wouldn’t provide slaves with enough cover, and Peter conceded at once. Ultimately, a mix of ideas from Inej and Edmund won out, and Katara found herself jumping back into action while her hair still smelled of seawater, wine, and blood.

Toph really must have been worried about Katara, because she let Katara hold her hand as they skimmed through the water in a bubble of air just underneath the surface of the waves. Inej and Mai were there too, and though they were silent, Inej was cleaning off one of her knives and Mai was watching with an air of faint interest that was almost friendly.

“I hate this,” was all Toph said, and Katara knew it was a massive sign of trust that Toph would go into battle with her, completely disconnected from the earth and completely at the mercy of Katara’s waterbending. Katara squeezed her hand.

“We’ll be quick,” she promised, and she was speeding the bubble of air through the water as fast as she possibly could. The plan was a complicated one, and stage one had to be finished by the time the Narnian ships arrived.

There were 17 Calormene ships in the wheel configuration of the Osakhafi Gate that day, and the ship that Lucy and Katara had escaped from was in the northern part of the wheel, which meant that a larger number of Calormene soldiers would be in the northern part of the wheel too. Katara dropped Inej off at the westernmost ship, so that Inej could sneak aboard and pick the locks on the chains that connected it to the Osakhafi Gate and the ship to the north of it. Then, pushing the bubble as fast as she could go, she cut across to the easternmost ship, so that Mai could sneak aboard and unlock the chains connecting that ship to the Gate and the ship to the north of it too. Katara badly wanted to say something, anything, to Mai before she went, but Katara knew they had no time and what she had to say couldn’t be put in a few words. Before Mai climbed up the rigging and disappeared, she did give Katara one long look, and when she passed by her to grab the rope, the long lick of her robe robe brushed Katara’s leg. That had to mean something, except Katara was once again speeding as fast as she could through the water and couldn’t think about it. 

When she and Toph landed at the Osakhafi Gate, she brought the bubble to the surface, just enough so that she and Toph could stick their hands up out of the water. Katara guided Toph’s hands to the right chains, the ones that bound the southernmost ships to the gate, and one by one, Toph tore the chains apart, metalbending them like she was pulling apart strands of licorice. When they had finished with the last chain, Katara poked her head up out of the water (encased in a protective ice dome, of course) so she could have one last peek at what was going on. From the north, the Narnian ships appeared on the horizon, split into two groups, one taking the east and one the west. To the west and east, Mai and Inej had succeeded in their missions, which meant the eight southernmost Calormene ships were bound now only to each other. And now for the final touch. 

Ducking back down under the water, Katara took out a vial of soraseed oil, uncorked it, and thrust it into the water beyond her bubble of air. According to Edmund, the oil had a certain kind of smell-taste that would become immediately apparent to every mermaid in the vicinity, and was as good a signal to them as fireworks were to a human. Katara had taken that information on faith, since she’d never seen a mermaid before, and the whole plan hinged on it, so—

“It’s happening,” she said to Toph, a sense of fierceness and wonder coming over her. It had only taken seconds, too!

“ _What’s_ happening?” said Toph. “I literally could not be more lost right now than if you dropped me in the middle of the desert. A desert would be more comfortable, actually!”

“Sorry,” said Katara. She’d gotten so excited for a second she forgot that Toph couldn’t see. “So—we’ve got the southernmost Calormene ships detached. The mermaids have their hooks into them, and they’re dragging them away from the gate, to the south. It’s slow work but steady, and the Narnian ships have come around the Gate to attack in a pincer movement; half of the Narnian ships are attacking the detached Calormene ships from the east, half from the west. The Narnians are boarding the Calormene ships now, attacking in earnest. The Calormene soldiers to the north have figured out what’s going on—they’re shouting—they can’t do anything about it. Oh—” A Narnian faun had fallen, bleeding, into the water, and Katara shot the bubble forward. “Someone needs help!”

“Someone?” said Toph, and then, a few seconds later, when Katara grabbed the faun out of the water and Toph accidentally touched their leg, “It’s _furry!”_

“I’m a faun,” said the faun, who was bleeding badly from a stab wound to the torso but apparently not bleeding so badly he couldn’t be mildly offended by this. 

“Like a baby deer?” said Toph. 

“Like a man with goat legs,” said Katara, busily healing him up.

“Except not like that at all,” said the faun. “I'm not half human, half goat, I'm a whole faun. My legs aren’t that short, for one thing, and the entire arrangement of my digestive—”

“Biology lesson later, please?” said Katara.

“I’m never leaving dry land ever again,” said Toph. 

Katara lifted the bubble of air up out of the water so it became a bubble of air encased by water, and dropped herself, the faun, and Toph down safely onto the deck of a Narnian ship. 

“That’s better,” said Toph.

“Thanks,” said the faun, patting his healed stomach once before he ran across the deck and made a magnificent flying leap across the water onto the deck of the nearest Calormene ship. 

Katara looked around. She could make out Aravis on the Carlormene ship, but the fighting there was slowing down as the last dozen Calormene soldiers chose to either fight on or surrender. 

“Now what?” said Toph.

“I think we’re winning,” said Katara. “Stage One will be over soon.” 

“Ugh, I wish it was Stage Three already,” said Toph. “That’s the only fun part.”

“I wish it was too,” said Katara, scanning the other ships, trying to see if she could find Mai.

“Oh, go on,” said Toph grumpily. “You might as well.”

Katara gave her a quick hug. “I’ll see you in a bit!” 

“Yeah, yeah.”

With that, Katara water-bubbled her way into the air. For a moment, when she looked down through the shining water below her feet, she could see all the chaos spread out: the arc of ships still being dragged slowly to the south, and the bloody hand-to-hand-combat there. Inej, with her two long knives; Aravis, with her sword; Edmund and Peter, back-to-back where the fighting was thickest; and finally, yes, there was Mai, taking cover behind a thick mast. 

Katara landed on that ship, setting down on the deck in an a one-woman ice dome, turning the dome’s shape into one with hard smooth planes like the facets of a diamond, bending the sunrise light into refracting rainbow rays, drawing their attention. With no danger of attack from the distracted soldiers, Mai stepped out from behind the mast and began throwing knives with such speed and precision that Katara knew she’d been practicing every day. That made Katara smile. She was always able to spot when Mai had been feeling depressed, because if Mai had lost interest in knives for a week, it would show, subtly, in her long-distance precision throwing, and Katara would know that she needed to talk to Mai about whatever was going on. It was nice to be reminded of how well she still knew Mai, how well she would always know her.

Between Mai’s knives, Katara’s water whip, and the swords of some twenty Narnian fauns and centaurs who had been able to quickly make the leap from ship to ship, the Calormene soldiers were soon all either dead, injured, or captured. Katara froze their hands into solid balls of ice, which wouldn’t hold them forever, but would hold them for long enough, and then set about healing everyone she could while Mai got the cage keys off of the dead captain and started unlocking them. 

Once every injury had been healed and every slave freed (and a few of the littler ones given hugs), Katara began making ice weapons. For every Calormene soldier whose weapons were taken, there were two new people who would be happy to fight slavers, so Katara needed to make as many blades as possible. The hilts were unpleasantly cold to grip, but pretty soon one woman, a tattooed Green Islander by the name of Clave, had the bright idea of tearing off the bottom of her shirt to make a makeshift grip, and within fifteen minutes of Katara landing on the ship, Phase One was over: everyone was free, armed, and ready to go. 

The ships had stopped floating south, which meant the mermaids had dragged them far enough, and as far as Katara could tell, the fighting had died down on other ships too. To the north, the Osakhafi Gate was still visible, although the soldiers on the decks of those ships looked about as big as grapes, they were so far away. At the sound of a great horn, Narnian ships began to move, collecting everyone except for the Calormene prisoners from the Calormene ships, regrouping. Once they were both onboard a Narnian ship, Katara sought out Mai.

Mai looked like more of a mess than Katara had ever seen her. One of her buns had gotten pulled into a weird lumpy shape, her neck was stained with blood that Katara hoped belonged to other people, and one of her sleeves had a big tear in it that showed Mai’s forearm underneath. But she was smiling that razor smile. Katara loved seeing it.

“Good luck,” Katara said, and Mai’s the smile disappeared. “Don’t worry,” said Katara. “You’ll be good. You’ll be perfect.”

“I don’t like talking,” said Mai. 

“But you do like threatening people, right?” said Katara fondly.

The corners of Mai’s mouth twitched up. “I guess,” she said.

“I believe in you,” said Katara, partly because she did, and partly because if she didn’t say something, she’d end up kissing her, and that was probably not decent behavior considering that she was the one who had left Mai in the first place. Except Mai was moving forward now, as if she’d read Katara’s thoughts, and by the time her hands were on Katara’s hips, Katara was already getting on her toes and leaning forward and _oh,_ yes. She smiled into it. Kissing Mai might be familiar, but she would never get used to it. It was like a revelation, every time. Mai was sinewy in some places, soft in others, softest in her silky hair and Katara buried her fingers in it, greedy for as much of Mai as she could get. When she finally pulled way, she saw Mai’s lips were redder than before and Mai looked as content as Katara felt. It was at this point, not at any particular turning in the battle, that Katara thought that everything would turn out all right after all. 

“Excuse me,” said a polite, deep voice somewhere behind Katara’s left shoulder. She turned. There was a gryphon, reddish-gold in its feathers, pure gold in its hawklike eyes. “Mai of the Fire Nation? I am Redtail.”

“Yeah,” said Mai, already adjusting her robe so she could get on. 

“Please don’t drop her,” said Katara to the gryphon, teasingly.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Redtail, and then Mai was seated on Redtail’s back and they were off, flying fast, gaining altitude and going ahead of the Narnian ships. 

Among the many wounded that Katara tended to was Aravis, who had been shot through the thigh with an arrow. As badly as she was bleeding, and as white as her knuckles were while she held Inej’s hand, Aravis appeared more interested in talking than anything else.

“You know,” she said, “I think you should marry her before we do our make-up celebration. That way Lucy will expend most of her wedding energy on you, not on us.”

“First of all,” said Katara, “We’re technically still broken up. And second of all, Lucy’s wedding energy is limitless, so that wouldn’t even help you.”

“And you’re too young to get married,” said Inej. Katara thought this was rich coming from only three or four years older than her, but she didn’t say it.

“I’m only saying, they didn’t look very broken up to me,” said Aravis. 

“They didn’t look broken up at all,” said Inej. 

“Can you badger me about this later?” said Katara. “I have other patients, you know.”

Aravis held out her hand. “Sure, but I want that arrow first.”

“Why?” said Katara, but she handed it over anyway.

Aravis gestured with the arrow. “If it ends up going Stage Two Backup Plan, I’m gonna shoot a Calormene soldier with this.”

“You’re so strange,” said Inej, but she said it affectionately. “An arrow’s an arrow. What difference does it make whether they previously shot you with it or not?”

“I wish I had a wife who appreciated my my poetic sensibilities,” Aravis sighed.

The two of them stuck around while Katara healed everyone that came to her, pausing only to wander off and get a thick slice of dense, salty dwarf bread which they split with Katara. Katara, for her part, was so busy with healing that she mostly ignored them, but she did notice that at one point Aravis undid and re-braided Inej’s hair so it was nice and neat, and Katara wondered if she could teach Mai how to do her hair loops just the way she liked them.

Then came the second blast of the great horn, and everyone on the Narnian ships went very quiet. Katara continued her healing work—she had a dwarf with a very complicated broken arm situation—but she listened, very carefully, and she could hear Mai shouting from across the water.

“Is there any captain of yours left alive?” Mai’s voice carried, and although she was shouting, she spoke with such calm confidence, verging on indifference, she might have been inquiring after the daily specials at a local tea shop. 

“I am Ashaka Tarkaan,” a voice shouted back. “Former Right hand to the General of the Gate, may his name live on in endless generations, now General of the Gate at the pleasure of the Tisroc, may he live forever. To whom do I make my courtesies?”

“I’m Mai.” And that was all.

“I thought you said she was the daughter of a diplomat,” said Aravis.

“She is,” said Katara, moving on from the dwarf with the broken arm to a Talking Lion with a stab wound through the ribs.

The silence went on for a second, and then Ashaka shouted, “The Tisroc, may he live forever, has a memory as long as the Endless Serpent, armies as vast as the oceans, slaves innumerable as grains of sand in the desert. If you flee now, you may yet find some small dark cave in the far reaches of the world in which you can hide, and save a few years of your lives until such a time as the Tisroc finally hunts you down. There are more cavalrymen sworn in the service of the Tisroc than there are people in Narnia and Archeland put together. There are more warships in all of the Calormene Empire than there are ships of any kind, even fishing dinghies, in all your countries put together. As Tash is inexorable, irresistible, so are his servants, and as his wrath is endless, so too is ours. The wrath of Tash falls like the weight of an avalanche down a mountain. Could the Tisroc but lift the little finger on his left hand, your—”

“I’m bored,” Mai called back, and she imbued those two words with such derision and cruelty that for a second, Katara was reminded of Azula. 

The General hesitated for only a second. “For your entertainment and for the entertainment of those who have been accursed to the insolence of—”

“Do you surrender or not?” called Mai.

“As the day follows night, as the water flows downhill, as the tiger hunts the deer, so do I stand in my loyalty to the Tisroc, may he live forever, for it is in my nature and in the true nature of every—”

“Do you surrender or not?” 

“The wisest surrender would be yours!” shouted the General. “Of my men, well-trained and alight with devotion, there remains five hundred. And of yours, there are only a few witches—”

“Benders,” muttered Katara.

“—and beasts, and hardly any true soldiers! Your kings are newcomers, mere children, with not even a single generation to anchor—”

It was at this point that Mai threw knives at him. Katara knew was distinctly against all rules of diplomatic interactions, but then, Mai wasn’t a diplomat, nor was she royalty, nor was she even a soldier in anybody’s army. She was an extremely precise warrior who had been trained all her life to conquer with as much vicious effectiveness as humanly possible, and she had kept this part of herself mostly dormant in the past five years. This was Mai’s one chance to use it. And it was out in full force.

The two knives pinned the General to the deck, one in each foot. He fell, hard. To his credit, he did not scream.

“I’m not Narnian,” said Mai. It sounded like a snarl. “I come from the Fire Nation. I come from the hidden corridors of palaces, the shadows in the back of the throne room, and I know all about empires like yours. You’re not brave, you’re just scared. I’m not asking you to choose between death in battle with Narnians and death at the hands of the Tisroc, whoever the _fuck_ that is. I’m telling you that if you don’t surrender now, there are hundreds of people you tried to make slaves, and they all have weapons, they will do whatever it is they want to do with you, and I will stand back and watch. I’ll be _happy_ to do it.” And then she clapped, once.

From the decks of the Narnian ships rose a chant, high and bright and ringing. It was not in any language that Katara knew, but when Aravis started chanting it, Katara joined in. There were only maybe seven or eight syllables in it. It sounded vaguely familiar, but not in a pleasant way. It sounded haunted.

“What is this?” said Katara to Aravis.

“This is an old prayer, from long before Calormen was unified,” said Aravis, half-shouting to be heard above the chant. “And every god has a vicious side. Even Zardeenah.”

Then Mai raised her hands above her head and clapped once. Again, there was silence.

“If I had my way, you’d be fishbait already,” Mai called down. “But I still have a use for you. The Narnians tell me that the Southern Colonies are rising up against the Tisroc. If you hand over all the slaves you have taken now, we will let you go, and you can go join them. Rebel life is hard, but it beats dying at our hands, or being given to the Tisroc’s torturers.”

“Is that mercy?” the General shouted back. 

“Mercy?” said Mai, derision dripping from the word. “No. You don’t get mercy. The Southern Uprising is useful to us. That’s all.”

There was a long silence. And then, finally, the General said, “We will let them row to you.” 

And that was it. The Narnian ships exploded in cheers, and Katara, who had not slept in more than twenty-four hours, who had seen and healed enough gruesome injuries to last a lifetime, literally lay down on the deck with her back pressed to the railing so nobody would accidentally step on her, and fell asleep.

Katara woke up to somebody poking her nose repeatedly, and the words, “Stage Three! Stage Three!”

“Five more minutes,” Katara moaned. 

“C’mon, Katara, it’s finally the fun part!” That was Toph. Had to be Toph. And now that Katara was actually processing the words _Stage Three,_ she knew she had to wake up. Sighing, she opened her eyes and sat up. Someone had draped a cloak over her. Her mouth felt weird, and her eyes were bleary, and it looked to be about noon. Half the Calormene fleet was gone, and the remaining half had been unchained so that they all floated as individual ships, and here, there, and everywhere, there was mostly freed people sitting around and talking.

“Edmund says Susan has beds and lunch and everything all ready for us at Narrowhaven, wherever that is,” said Toph, “and I’m hungry. So can we please hurry and get out of here?” 

“Ugh, fine.” Katara rubbed her eyes one last time, then reached over the side of the ship and waterbended a floating bubble that she and Toph could climb into. She skimmed the bubble through the water until she and Toph finally landed right next to the left pillar of the Osakhafi Gate, and Katara pressed Toph’s hands to the rock. “Your time to shine now, go ahead.”

“Whee!” said Toph, and then the pillar began to rumble. The vibrations were so intense that Katara could feel them through the water, and then the pillar began to crumble, with a showering of dust and pebbles and finally big chunks of rock plopping into the ocean, until Toph had completely destroyed what had once been a spar of rock as thick as a horse was long and as tall as five storeys. “Well, that’s that. How about the next one?”

And the next pillar took even less time to fall. This time, as it began to crumble, Katara wrapped a curl of water around the Osakhafi Gate itself, grabbing it before it too could disappear into the water. She wanted to take it with her, back to the Lone Islands. The Gate couldn’t stand in the ocean, because it might be used for ill purposes, but something about it disappearing forever felt wrong too. Perhaps the Lone Islanders would have a purpose for it.

As Katara skimmed with Toph back through the waters, dragging the fallen Gate behind her, the sky expansive and cloudlessly blue above, a thought occurred: she _had_ tried to help people. Her friends _had_ come to save her, riding in on Appa. And, if Toph was right, they all would get lunch at the end of it, together.

Katara smiled.


End file.
